


An Incomplete Sentence

by monobuu



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Cats, F/M, Major character death in that they have to die to be reincarnated, Time is Not Linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9830453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monobuu/pseuds/monobuu
Summary: She’s chased him through more lives than she can remember. She’ll be damned if she loses him now.





	

The first time she remembers meeting him, and she’s sure there have been many more before this one, but she cannot remember them all. The first time is when she walks through the door of the homeless shelter. The sound of her footsteps are lost in the myriad noises of the cafeteria space, the heels of her boots only adding to the static of noise.

 

This shelter is always busy on Tuesdays, she knows that. She’d been coming here for at least a couple months now, and the crowds are not a surprise. But she has never seen  _ him _ before. He’s sitting alone at a corner table, hunched over his food. His shirt is thin with age, his bootlaces mismatched as they wound their way around his boots. His hair is longer than most men wore it these days, and he has scars scattered across his lower arms.

 

She glances at the food lines. While the shelter is indeed busy, most are already sitting down with their food, and there is plenty left, so she winds her way towards this man who has called to her without ever opening his mouth. She pulls out a chair across from him and sits down slowly as he looks up.

 

“What?” he asks, and his voice triggers something. She tilts her head and somehow, she just  _ knows _ she has met him before. She just can’t place the where or the when.

 

“No use starin’ girl,” he says when she doesn’t answer. 

 

“I’m Beth,” she says.

 

He stares at her, eyes blank. “So?”

 

“Just saw you sitting here alone,” she continues. “Thought you might want some company?”

 

He narrows his eyes at her, brow furrowing in thought, then goes back to eating silently. She drags her finger across the table as she thinks, and is taken by a sudden coughing fit, her throat itching horribly.

 

“You alright?” he asks, when the coughing finally subsides. She nods quickly; her throat has been sore for days, she’s sure it will pass in another few.

 

“What’s for dinner today?” she asks instead.

 

He looks up at her, glances down at his plate and shrugs. “Arroz con pollo,” he mumbles. “And some biscuits.”

 

“What’s that?” she asks.

 

He gives her a raised eyebrow. “It’s bread.”

 

She smiles. “No! The other one, the arroz one.”

 

He lets out a single huff of breath, but she can hear the amusement in it nonetheless. “Chicken with rice.”

 

“Is it spicy?”

 

He shrugs. “Yeah, why? Can’t handle the heat?”

 

She makes a face. “Not really.”

 

He laughs then, an actual laugh. She feels her heart flutter. 

 

“Alright,” he says, spooning the last bit of rice into his mouth before dropping it onto his empty plate. “I know they keep some bland as shit version back there for the kids,” he tells her. 

 

“Really?” she asks.

 

“Yeah. My breaks over, hop in line and I’ll make sure you don’t get the spicy stuff, alright?”

 

She watches him go, putting his plate in the bin of dirty dishes before hopping behind the end of the serving counter. He grabs an apron and throws it over his head, tying it behind his back as he turns to look at her. Frustration flashes across his face and he gestures for her to get in line impatiently before disappearing into the back preparation area.

 

She drums her fingers on the table and stands, tugging her torn sweater down and smoothing back the frizzy mess that masquerades as her hair. She hasn’t been able to shower in almost a week, and she knows it shows. She coughs into her hand again and wipes it clean on her pant leg as she gets in line. When she gets to the rice and chicken, he’s already standing there with a plate piled high, two biscuits on the side. She takes it carefully, smiles at him for his kindness.

 

“Thank you,” she says, and turns to continue down the line.

 

“My name’s Daryl,” he says quickly, and she pauses to look back. “I’m here on Tuesdays. Just switched.”

 

She nods, hope making her chest warm. “See you next week, Daryl.”

 

She goes to eat her meal, sneaking quick glances at him whenever she can. She doesn’t know that the cough isn’t a cold and that she won’t make it to next Tuesday.

 

-d-b-

 

In her next life, she has loved him for exactly two years and four months. She has known it was him for much longer, since the day he punched Stevie Colton in the face for getting mud on her dress. 

 

Since the day he’d turned to her with a split lip and asked, “You alright?”

 

Right at that moment she’d known. This was the boy from her last life, and the one before that, and countless others before. But she was shy, and a silly young girl, and so she’d yelled at him.

 

“I can protect myself!”

 

He’d yelled back, and so it began. He’d put lizards in her backpack, and she’d draw flowers on his face when he fell asleep during arithmetic. He’d pull her ponytail and she’d tie his shoelaces together. Years and years of pranks and teasing, but if anyone else so much as looked at her the wrong way, he was the first person to stand in their way, even before her sister Margaret.

 

“You don’t touch her,” he’d said their first day of high school, the boy who’d made a crude pass at her already on his ass in the dirt. “If you do, you deal with me, got it punk?”

 

The kid crabwalked a few paces before scrambling to his feet and running, and when he’d turned around, she’d punched him in the shoulder. He at least had the decency to act like it hurt.

 

“Ow, Beth, what was that for!?”

 

“I can take care of myself, Daryl!” she’d told him, stomping her foot and slamming her hands onto her hips.

 

“Well ya shouldn’t have’ta!” he’d argued, looking petulant and rubbing the spot where she’d hit him. 

 

Things had begun to tilt then, and she began to think of him as something more than just that boy who splashed rain water on her nice new shoes once. He was shy and a little embarrassed, but so was she, and they made it work. They’d had their first kiss right before senior year, and he’d given her a ring just after graduation.

 

And now-

 

“I don’t want you to go,” Beth says, hands clutching his tightly. She can feel it deep down in the unknowns of her heart, a creeping, horrible sense of dread. But she imagined everyone felt that these days.

 

“I know, sweetheart,” he tells her, freeing a hand so that he can brush the loose strands of her hair away from her face. “But I have to. They say the fighting is almost done where I’m going, and it won’t be long before those fucking assholes surrender.”

 

“Language,” she chides softly, almost no heat behind it. 

 

He laughs. “Just you wait. I’ll be back before you know it.” 

 

He tilts her face up and she meets his eyes.

 

“I love you,” he says.

 

“I love you, too,” she echoes.

 

He never comes home.

 

-d-b-

 

The next time she is young, so very, very young, and he is her knight in shining armor.

 

“Beth, my girl! How are you feeling today?”

 

She looks up at him and smiles as wide as she can, tugs self consciously at the hat covering her hairless head.

 

“I’m doing okay, Mr. Dixon,” she says quietly. She pulls the sheets up a little more, small hands buried in the ends of a too-large sweater. It was her brother Carl’s, but he said she could have it - for luck. 

 

Mr. Dixon gives her a comically shrewd look. “Are you telling the truth?”

 

“Well,” Beth says, hedging. “I’m a little tired.”

 

“That’s okay,” he says, crouching down to her level. “It’s okay to be tired. It’s normal.”

 

He ruffles her hair and stands, takes the clipboard at the end of her bed, and she watches him read through it. He’s wearing her favorite shirt today, the one with Snoopy on it. Most of the other nurses wear plain blue or green shirts with matching pants, but Mr. Dixon always wears colorful shirts just for her.

 

He lets out a small sigh and her focus shifts back to him. He looks up at her with a smile, puts the clipboard back in its holder.

 

“How about I take you down to the art room later and we make a picture of that scary dream you had.”

 

She scoffs immediately. She’s not scared of anything! “Zombies aren’t scary, Mr. Dixon.”

 

“Maybe not to  _ you _ , Ms. Grimes,” he says seriously. “But not all of us have nerves of steel.”

 

She laughs and waves as he walks out, her mood brightening considerably as she thinks about how much she’s going to impress him by drawing the scariest, most hideous zombie later that day. She doesn’t understand the feeling that she has, but she likes when he’s around, knows that he’s her very best friend, even better than Judith! She hopes she can leave the hospital soon. She hopes she can get better and maybe she can ask Mr. Dixon to go get ice cream with her. 

 

She hears him talking to her father just outside her door that evening, her newest drawing hanging on the window and obscuring her view just enough. 

 

“It’s time to start thinking about other options, the chemo just isn’t working.”

 

“Oh, god. How- how long?”

 

Beth grins. She wonders what Mr. Dixon’s favorite ice cream is. 

 

“Maybe a month.”

 

Everyone loves ice cream.

 

-d-b-

 

In one particular life, she becomes aware lightning quick when he walks into her classroom. Fuzzy and indistinct scenes flash behind her eyes and she grabs hold of her desk as her heart throbs in time with her head. She gets a hold of herself and goes about her day, keeping an eye on her new student.

 

He’s dressed a bit haphazardly and she can guess by his clothes that his family is poor, and she knows by his shyness that his classmates have worked it out too. Though she tries every day to instill in her kids the importance of being kind, she is not the true sculptor of their lives - that duty lies with the parents. So when she sees the first hint of bullying start to rear its ugly head, she makes sure to nip it in the bud, promises her new student silently that she will watch out for him.

 

Weeks later, as she’s helping him with a stubbornly difficult math problem, she wonders why it’s only ever her that remembers. She looks silently at his shaggy hair, the few traces of baby fat still left in his cheeks, and a second thought hits her right in the stomach.

 

They’ll miss each other in this life too. Just like in all the others. Why is their timing always off? Why would fate keep throwing them back together if only to rip them apart again?

 

“Miss Greene?” he asks her, looking up at her for approval. “Is this right?”

 

She focuses on him again. In this life, she may only have one year with him, but she will do her utmost to make that year count.

 

“Yes, Daryl,” she tells him. “You’re doing great.”

 

-d-b-

 

“Have you ever had this feeling that you’re not where you’re supposed to be?” 

 

“Yes, right this very moment, in fact,” Lori says to her, face falling into a familiar frown. “I made a reservation, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have a table already.”

 

Beth shakes her head, “No, not like that. I mean-”

 

“Your table’s ready,” comes a voice from behind her, and Lori stands up with a heartfelt, “Finally!”

 

Beth follows her friend to their table and they sit quietly with their menus before ordering. When the waiter has departed once more, Lori turns to her and says unexpectedly, “So what’s wrong? You’ve been kinda out of it lately.”

 

Lori isn’t generally one to focus on others’ problems, but Beth takes the opportunity for what it is.

 

“I don’t know,” she says, carefully folding her napkin and placing it on her lap. “Lately I’ve felt like everything is wrong somehow.”

 

“Are you and Zach having problems?” Lori asks. “You seemed so happy when we went out last month…”

 

“No, not problems exactly,” Beth says, sighing in frustration. “It’s this weird feeling in my gut that won’t go away, it says I’m not supposed to be here.”

 

“At this restaurant?”

 

“No,” Beth says as she shakes her head vehemently. “Here in life. Like I’m not supposed to be with Zach, or not in this city, or- I don’t know, maybe I’m driving the wrong car, or wearing the wrong dress. Everything feels  _ wrong. _ ”

 

Lori looks confused and somewhat unwilling to handle this turn of events, and Beth - not for the first time - wonders if she should’ve just kept quiet about her problems. Last week she’d tried talking to her sister about it and had gotten much the same reaction as right now, though Glenn had been more encouraging.

 

“Maybe you should try changing something, then,” Lori suggests. “I was in a rut with Shane a while back, and I started doing yoga to channel that, and everything- well I mean it’s not perfect, but we got through it. Maybe that’s all you need.”

 

Beth nods slowly, opens her mouth to answer, but is cut short as shouting erupts near the back of the restaurant.

 

They both turn and watch as a young man bursts through the doors leading to the kitchen. He’s dressed casually, jeans and a black tee with a leather coat on top of it, and in his arms he has what looks like a messenger bag, tucked securely as he runs. He weaves through the tables towards them and another man comes barreling through the door. 

 

“Get back here, you little shit!” the second man yells, large and lumbering and not nearly as agile as the first. 

 

The first man catches her eye and winks, then dodges around her chair, hand coming out to grab hold of the back of it and turn her as he passes. She squawks indignantly as she’s rudely yanked to the side, now facing the second man, who is lumbering toward her. Her eyes widen and she slides from her chair just as the second man, eyes too busy following the first man to notice the blockade now in his way, runs straight into her chair and goes tumbling to the floor in a flailing pile of cuss words. 

 

Beth whips around to see the first man run out the front door of the restaurant, then watches as the man who just tripped over her chair gets up and follows. When they are both gone, Lori hurries up to her in a frenzy, followed by a few of the restaurant staff members.

 

“Beth! Are you alright?” she asks urgently, grabbing her arms and pulling her around to face her. 

 

But Beth’s eyes are still stuck on the front door.

 

“The feeling,” she whispers, mouth ticking up on one side.

 

“What?” Lori asks.

 

Beth turns to her friend and smiles. “It’s gone.”

 

-d-b-

 

In her next life, Beth wonders if everyday, normal cats are self aware, or if it’s just the ones that the universe likes to fuck with.

 

She sits in her designated window sill, on the east-facing side of the apartment, and flicks her tail idly as she contemplates life and fate’s sadistic sense of humor. She’s been aware for a few years now, ever since her human had picked her out of a box labeled FREE TO A GOOD HOME. She’s all white, as far as she can tell, with the exception of a small, ashy colored mark on her chest that vaguely resembled the moon. 

 

“Belle! I’m home!”

 

Her ears flick at the sound (it’s not her name, but since she doesn’t have an actual voice, she settles for him getting the B right, at least) and she turns to jump gracefully down from her perch. She sprints to the front door and begins winding herself about the legs of her human in figure eights, purring as loud as she can until he picks her up.

 

“Careful, girl,” he says, positioning her in the cradle of his arm. “You’ll kill me doin’ that.”

 

His name is Daryl and he is hers. And in the view of everyone who comes to visit him, she is a finicky cat who doesn’t like women - and some men. She keeps a list in her head, very precise, and sometimes she cannot put her finger - er, paw - on why she dislikes a certain person, but it is how it is, and she rarely questions her judgement. Animals have better instincts anyway, right?

 

“S’why you should get a dog,” another voice says, and Beth whips her head around to peer over Daryl’s shoulder, eyes narrowing.

 

This is one of those humans she does not like. At all.

 

“Neegan,” Daryl says. “I live in an apartment the size of a normal person’s bathroom. I couldn’t fit a chihuahua in here if I tried.”

 

“Chihuahua’s are smaller than cats, D.”

 

“Yeah, but their  _ loud _ ,” Daryl says with a smirk. “Besides, Belle’s the best cat there is.”

 

Neegan tilts his head and gives Belle a doubtful look. “She hates me, how good can she be?”

 

Daryl laughs and Beth turns to rub the top of her head underneath his chin. She loves it when he laughs. “She hates you because you’re an asshole,” Daryl says, setting Beth down and heading toward their small living room.

 

“Now quit distractin’ me so I can get what we came for.”

 

“Alright, alright,” Neegan says easily and Beth hops onto the back of the couch, watches him from her perch as he opens Daryl’s refrigerator. “Can I grab a coke?”

 

“Yeah, sure.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

Daryl makes a triumphant sound and pulls something out of a box located near his tv stand. “Got it!” he calls, holding up what Beth knows is a contraption he often uses while playing video games, though she’s not exactly sure what it does. 

 

She tilts her head. She likes when Daryl plays video games, because she can curl up somewhere close by, sometimes on his lap or up on the back of the couch near his shoulders, and spend the night with her favorite human. But sometimes he goes over to his friends’ houses and plays there. When that happens, she ends up spending the night by herself.

 

She really does not like Neegan.

 

“Alright, Belle, be back in a little bit,” he tells her, bending over to give her ears a scratch. “Hold down the fort while I’m gone.”

 

And out the door he goes.

 

-d-b-

 

The next time around she is not a cat, thankfully, but when she finds him, she knows that they have once again missed each other. She goes home that day and cries, thinking they are forever two ships that pass each other in the night - destined to only ever have a few years at most together, if any at all.

 

The next day she goes to work with a smile on her face, determined to make the best of it, and for the first time, she is thankful he cannot remember. She tells herself this every day, and eventually, it is easier to handle.

 

“Mr. Dixon,” she calls, walking into his room. “It’s time for your medicine.”

 

“I don’t need medicine,” he says grumpily from his wheelchair. “I don’t need this place and I don’t need some uppity young flower taking care of me, neither.”

 

Beth smiles. 

 

“And how boring my days would be if I didn’t get to argue about this with you every day,” she tells him, placing his small cup of pills onto the table he sits beside. She takes the remote from his bed and turns his television off, knowing he’ll take the pills despite his words.

 

“Don’t turn that off, I’m watching that,” he says after swallowing.

 

“It’s a rerun,” she says. “You’ve seen every single episode of Dare Devil, don’t act like you haven’t.”

 

“Ain’t much else to do here,” he complains.

 

“Well today, we are going to go down to the common room and-”

 

“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘ice,’ ‘cream,’ or ‘social’ I will keel over in this chair right now in protest.”

 

She puts her hands on her hips and gives him a look. “They have mint chocolate chip.”

 

He squints his eyes at her, the crows feet crinkling softly as he makes a clucking sound with his tongue. “The devil sent you, didn’t he? That’s the only explanation.”

 

Beth sighs dramatically and goes around to the back of his chair so she can begin to push him toward the door.

 

“Can I at least put moonshine in my ice cream?”

 

“No.”

 

“How ‘bout whiskey?”

 

“You may not put any alcohol in your ice cream, Mr. Dixon,” Beth tells him on a laugh.

 

“Stop callin’ me Mr. Dixon,” he says, and Beth quiets. “Makes me feel old.”

 

Beth waits a beat, then says, “You’re 82.”

 

“That’s not the point.”

 

“Okay, okay,” she says, smiling as they go slowly down the hall.

 

“Daryl,” she says, putting emphasis on his first name. “Let’s go flirt with some old ladies.”

 

-d-b-

 

When she met him in this life, he was broken, and she hadn’t realized who he was until much too late. 

 

She opens her eyes and she sees a familiar ceiling. Her heart skips and she closes them again for a long moment; she has held herself back for five days now, told herself that she had to wait at least that long before acting. She won’t wait any longer. She pushes herself into a sitting position and ignores the person who just entered the room.

 

“Don’t move, Beth, you’re-”

 

“I’m fine,” she says. She rips the IV out of her arm and lifts a hand to her forehead, gingerly feeling the closed wound with her fingertips. Her cast is gone, those wounds closed and long healed, her treatments finished. She hops off the bed and goes for her clothes, stripping with little head for privacy.

 

“Beth, I’ve told you countless times, you need to stay here so we can-”

 

“No,” she says firmly. “You have done quite enough. Rick made a deal with you. Noah for me and Carol. I’m leaving.”

 

“You can’t-”

 

Oh, but she can. And she does. She’s been packing her bag with everything she might need since they day she’d woken up. She has provisions for her trip, weapons, clothing, and all of the tracking lessons Daryl had taught her on their journey.

 

She tightens the strap on her backpack, ignores those hospital staff who have come to see her off, and heads out in the direction she is sure her family went.

  
_ This time,  _ she thinks.  _ This time. _

**Author's Note:**

> -Time is not linear in this fic. The order of Beth’s memories is as she experienced them, not as we see time progressing.
> 
> -In some, the age gap is huge, I know. That was the point. In these lives, the connection between Beth and Daryl is still there, strong as ever, even if it has to stay platonic. I hope this is as apparent in those particular lives as it was in the cat one. Obviously it wasn’t bestiality, nor were either of them pedophiles.


End file.
